Atrial arrhythmias are conditions causing an irregular heartbeat that can result in blood clots, stroke, heart failure, and other cardiac complications. It is believed that the primary cause of atrial arrhythmia is stray electrical signals within the left or right atrium of the heart. It is generally known that ablation therapy may be used to treat atrial arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation (AF) and other conditions. When tissue is ablated, or at least subjected to ablative energy generated by an ablation generator and delivered by an ablation catheter, lesions form in the tissue. Electrodes mounted on or in ablation catheters are used to create tissue necrosis in cardiac tissue to correct atrial arrhythmia. The ablation catheter imparts ablative energy (e.g., radiofrequency energy, cryoablation, lasers, chemicals, high-intensity focused ultrasound, etc.) to cardiac tissue to create a lesion in the cardiac tissue. This lesion disrupts undesirable electrical pathways and thereby limits or prevents stray electrical signals that lead to arrhythmias.
Determining an ablation location within a patient's heart may be relatively difficult. Different ablation locations are associated with different cardiac conditions, and each patient's heart is different. Although at least some solutions have been posed to identify ablation locations using software, it has been observed that many practitioners do not always follow software recommendations, instead choosing to rely on clinical knowledge in determining where to ablate.